BBC Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Serious' Violation of Media Regulations, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC engaged in a "major breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has directed the corporation to transmit a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our code, we are directing the corporation to air a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be determined," it said.
'Potential to Damage Credibility'
The regulator's announcement stated: "Our investigation found that the film's omission to reveal that the presenter's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.
"It meant that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the details he provided.
"Credibility is at the core of the connection between a broadcaster and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the risk to erode the significantly high levels of credibility that viewers would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The film was withdrawn from iPlayer in February after the boy's familial connections came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry determined it infringed the broadcaster's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A corporation official stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and language are confirmed."
